ILX Art Gallery: Tregaskin Memorial Wing (do not read if you hate me)

ADNAMS. BEER FOR PEOPLE WHO DROP LITTER AT BEACHES.

I really like these WCC, esp the row of buildings one.

the footprints look like tears at first!

gorgeous K.
I love the wording on that 'staring at the waves' piece.

i will browse the rest of your flickr work soon.

WEEPING TREE TEARS THE LANDSCAPE IS CRYING

IT'S A METAPHOR FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF TEH ENVIRONMENTS HUG TREEZ NOUW!!!

LOL no just kidding. Just got back from my power walk so I'm pretty chipper.

Hmm, maybe that wasn't the best Wormell choice, realise now it does look like litter, but it was part of a series where bits of beer bottles were disguised as bits of landscape - a beer bottle amidst a row of wintered boats leaning against a wall, that sort of thing. I am against litter, disgusting savages, obviously.

I like the Wormell stuff a lot. The secret littering aspect only makes it better (not cos littering is good - IT IS BAD - but because I expect the slightest hint of 'bad PR' to get removed from anything like that).

Pictures with thick black outlines and nice colours always make me want a 20ft stained glass version.

Feel like I'm spamming mine own thread, but here's another I did over Xmas but only just scanned/coloured today.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7171/6830066355_6e83bfa30a_o.jpg

Something I don't do much any more, put myself in my drawings.

(Irony being, of course, that I'd be checking my iPhone and arguing on a sandbox RH thread...)

after several days of looking at this thread and thinking "I like those pics" + "I'll come back and post when I think of something better to say than 'I like those pics'", I am now admitting defeat and coming here to post:

I like those pics

(seriously, lovely use of colour, as everyone else has said. what does the Cornish say on the harbour wall picture?)

'Merry Christmas and a happy new year'? I hadn't realised Cornish was that similar to Welsh.

This is great work, WCC.

Thank you! It's actually much nicer to have someone say they like my pics than to say nothing. So don't admit defeat for not being eloquent, you just made me feel rlly happy and proud! Which is a good thing to do.

The Cornish on the Mousehole Harbour one - Nadelik Lowen ha Blydhen Nowydh Da (oh god I had to check the spelling about 10 times when I did it) - it just means Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. It's like the one Cornish phrase that pretty much every Cornish person knows. It was seriously freaky - when I got down to Mousehole last year, literally I was walking to my cottage (well, not my cottage, but the one I was renting) and the first art shop I walked by had that card hanging up in the window! That was the strangest thing ever, but it felt really nice.

x-post yes. Cornish is apparently like Welsh spelled phonetically. Which should come in useful if I ever have The Welsh Dream ever again.

always liked your stuff WCC, best of luck with further shows etc.

Thank you!

Also that Cornish text thing has just reminded me. I planned on entering the Gorsedh this year in the calligraphy section. Now I just have to find (or write, though I'm still v wonky) a piece of Cornish text to write and illuminate - I think it would be really fun to do a more modern take on illuminated manuscripts. Obviously Celt it up a bit and make it harken back to the Cornish Monasterial style but of course it will come out looking like one of my drawings.

I love these. I always wonder how people colour paintings like this - on the computer I assume?

Remember seeing your stuff in the dream machine I think it was, in East Eulwich, and wanting to buy one. But i was poor then so couldn't :(

lex totally otm about rethinking rainbows

*East Dulwich

East Eulwich! I wish I'd had a show in East Eulwich, that sounds like a fabulous place! ;-) The Dream Machine but it was so inept at actually selling stuff, but it was kind of more an exercise in having a hangout place than a real shop anyway.

Rethinking Rainbows - isn't that an album or a musical or something? ha.

But that's the best part about learning another language, that idioms and the way that terms are constructed make you use a completely different part of your head, and it's really good for thinking of things in a different way, and stretching your head. I absolutely loved it when I found the word Kammneves, it was just like... whoa. Broken heavens, how do you even... yeah.

You already know I love your art, WCC, but I feel I should pop my head in and repeat: I love your art.

Pictures with thick black outlines and nice colours always make me want a 20ft stained glass version.

Very much this.

My brother was always trying to get me to work in stained glass. But, like, I just thought - heat, broken shards of glass, just too much possibility to injure myself.

I used to work in Tiffany glass, when I was an undergrad and I had time on my hands and access to a shed with running water. It's messy and burns from the soldering iron are more of a danger than the broken glass even, but it's really rewarding! You'd struggle to get the lettering though, and I do think the words are an important part of what you're doing.

My fave is the Cornish Christmas card. Beautiful colours, so cold and yet so soft.

I have said this elsewhere, but your art is amazing. It really makes me happy to see someone I know from the internet make such great work. It always makes me happy when I see a new one of your pictures appear on Flickr.

I guess Alasdair Gray as well.

Pre-empting KDT, just so I can post this again. This is the best flyer I've ever had for any show of mine (too bad the band broke up!)

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3381/3474856970_055447bb68_z.jpg

these are nice; i like the similarity to the perry bible fellowship guy's style
can i assume the watermark/copyright is added digitally and isn't exactly part of the finished piece?

xpost

Wow! That's one mean looking owl.

Hello! yes, sorry, real life intruded. Went off to ~art galleries~ yesterday to look at the David Shrigley exhibition with Lex (it was v v funny and left us very giggly afterwards.)

Yes, the copyright is digitally added, but after the whole Elephant In The Room debacle, I don't put any artwork anywhere on the web without my name all over it. Can't be too careful.

Zora, I am so jealous of you getting to make Stained Glass! I love Tiffany Glass so damn much, it's the richness and the colour and the idea of working with actual light to make things glow - you can sometimes do the same thing with digital art, since the monitor itself glows (not so much with LCD screens, that's kind of a loss since CRTs have gone out of favour) but that glowing quality is really important to me. There must be some way of getting text onto stained glass - because I have often seen, for example, bible verses and the like written into stained glass in churches - but I suppose that must be painted on, rather than a part of the stained glass process? I've watched a couple of instructional videos but I'm never quite sure which bits of glassmaking are staining/painting after the glass is made, and which bits are chemical colour mixed into the glass when it's being created. Seems a combination of both.

When is the last day?

I have very much enjoyed seeing these works. Thank you for sharing them.

Last day of what?

Streatham

Streatham will collapse in a black hole and be sucked into the sun on 22nd May 2012 when the mayan apocalypse kills us all.

Huh?

Oh, wait you mean the exhibition that is currently on at Streatham Library?

That ends some time mid next week, I haven't made arrangements to pack it up yet but I'm predicting the last day will probably be next Tuesday or Wednesday.

Ah, righto. Will maybe make it over the far side of Londinium (cf Batman, this week) maybe next week...

Right. So I am continuing with this whole "draw a picture every day while you are unemployed" theme and today I could not decide which of two versions I like better of this. I went to all this effort colouring it in, but right now I'm leaning towards the BW version anyway. Sigh.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7026/6843426911_6ddcf5829b_o.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7174/6843426879_d472029db9_o.jpg

I might like the colour version better if I replaced the black with a more vivid colour but nothing I've really tried has worked at all. Except a very bright orange which made it impossible to tell what the rest of it was about.

Ooh, pretty. I think I am enjoying the colour one more, but it might just be my hungover brain tripping out.

I've been feeling a bit blocked lately, and not much like drawing. Which is not unusual, it passes if I find some new inspiration.

I think one of the things that stops me is this kind of FEAR, that I have to do something ~important~ with these things, rather than just drawing for fun and kicks. Maybe I should start a new thread for this, and open it up to other creative types rather than selfishly talk about it on a thread that's all ME ME ME. But I need to talk about this.

I find it really paralysing, this idea that I should be ~doing something with~ all this art. It makes me feel kind of unable to do anything. And obviously it strikes worst when I'm unemployed. Because when I'm employed, all this is so obviously a hobby and something I do for kicks. But as soon as I'm unemployed, this idea keeps repeating itself (both internally and from other people making helpful suggestions) that I should be making a living from this. And that expectation, that should, it's completely paralysing for me. It doesn't make me work harder, it makes me sit staring off into space.

Is it really self defeating? To never want to think about or deal with the whole "should I market/sell/promote these things?" idea. Because it makes me feel really insecure and unhappy, when most of the time I just want to be made happy drawing swirlies. It makes me feel awful, like actually physically awful (worried, anxious, butterfly stomach) when art is something I try to use to make me feel nice.

Oh, STFU and just post some pretty pictures WCC, you're stupid for worrying about this stuff.

In my limited experience, making a living from your own efforts seems to consist of 90 % of hassling people and trying get their attention and being hassled in turn and less creativity than you'd expect or like.

I really hate that kind of work: I'm not business minded or even particularly interested in business details.

The other big minus is you're then under pressure to keep producing and have to give up those fallow periods where you don't feel that creative, but are probably essential for recharging your creative energies and developing new interests and new directions.

So personally I wouldn't be tempted to try to make my creative efforts my living, even if it was viable.

Yeah, all of that post seems very very OTM and you've hit the nail on the head WRT the discomfort I feel.

I'm sorry WCC, I guess I said all the wrong things in my last email. :(

I have the same thing wrt my writing. It has become much more difficult to do it since I started hanging out with people who make a living from writing.

If you don't feel like pushing in a moneymaking direction, there's no reason you should.

No, no, don't feel bad! I mean, I brought a lot of that stuff up, because I was thinking around it, so it's obviously been on my mind. And a lot of people have encouraged me to do similar things - and that's the important word, *encourage*.

The problem is completely in my head.

But, like, given the choice between spending 75% of my time doing an awful dayjob and 25% of the time doing the stuff I love - vs 90% of the time chasing people and work and only 10% of the time doing the stuff I love. It's never going to be an ideal situation, so one has to take the less bad option.

I guess it's kind of weird, because I've done it myself to other artists, said things like "that's beautiful - if you put that on a t-shirt, I want one!" which easily gets translated into "that's marketable - you should sell it!" And then it becomes the instant reflex reaction - instead of "that's good, I love it" it becomes "that's good, you should sell it" and then you turn into my mother and my ex boyfriend and all of these people whose attitudes I have found really poisonous towards, I dunno, not even making art, but just enjoying ~lyfe~.

It's a stupid, naive attitude, I know - these things should exist because they're beautiful, no other reason. But I just want to be happy, and worrying about money all the time is the number two happy killer in the universe. (after unrequited love.)

WCC : so glad to see more of your art.

i love the colours and the styling of the text.

the whole t-shirt debacle has clearly kicked you into action ,that and the loss of the soul sucking job you had.

Are you able/happy to tell us what happened with the t-shirt thing? Just interested in the outcome because stuff like that makes me mad. I wasn't on that board but saw the initial posts about it.

Oh, it worked out alright in the end! They admitted it, apologised for it, drew up a contract and sent over a quite decent fee. Happy ending all round, it's the kind of thing that gives one faith in the power of the internet (and also that corporations can sometimes behave decently to the little guy.)

Anyway, for some reason my brain this afternoon got it into my head that there was an album called this. And of course there isn't, there's a RH lyric that's a bit similar and a Cocteau Twins ep that's a bit similar but my head was going "who is that by? is it an early Pink Floyd track? argh!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7050/6859136937_99124385f0_o.jpg

Not entirely happy with it - I like the trees (though I was worried they wouldn't come out) but I don't like the ripples (though they looked alright in my sketchbook) but it'll do for now. Might revisit the idea later if I get inspired.

So we went to see the Kusama exhibit at the Tate earlier this week (and it was AMAZING, anyone within striking distance of London should totally go and see it if you have eyes) but at the same time, wandering through it, I was struck quite often by - um, I dunno, it sounds arrogant to say "how similar it is" when she is an internationally renowned artist and I'm a bedroom sketcher. But we have similar motifs, we address similar issues, and I came out of the show saying "OMG, I want to paint an Infinity Net all over my walls" (so far I have resisted that urge, but I might get bored this weekend.)

So I had this worry that I was going to come away unduly *influenced* (which is usually a good thing when you encounter another artist who rearranges your mind so that you want to do new things) but more with the fear that my stuff was going to end up looking like her, and not me. So yeah, I drew this.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7040/6890372473_418448cf74_o.jpg

(Click through to Flickr for the quote/explanation if you are not familiar with the metaphor from the Bell Jar)

where in london is "like ripples on a shallow lake"? (if indeed it is a sketch of an actual place rather than an imagined one.) i'm unused to seeing such jagged drawings from you!

god, i loved the bell jar so much when i read it at age c.13, and i have totally forgotten that metaphor.

(cosign the kusama exhibition 100%)

i think A GIANT BROUGHT DOWN BY WEEDS would make an excellent woodblock print.

Ripples On A Shallow Lake is not anywhere in London, there are no hills like that in London!

it's based on teenage memories of upstate NY, the Finger Lakes and Lake George, those incredibly narrow lake valleys with super-steep hills above them, all covered in pine forest. That's not English terrain at all. (Though there are parts of Scotland that look like that, so maybe it's ancestral pining.)

It's funny coz the Bell Jar is one of those things that I read when I was 15 and I was like OMG THIS IS SO AMAZING THIS IS THE STORY OF LIFE, TEH UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!11ELEVENTY but as I grew up, I started to think, actually, no, this is kind of teenage and melodramatic and I should really grow out of it. But now I'm thinking I should revisit it as an adult, because there are things in there that are quite profound.

I wish I'd bought the book of the Kusama exhibit now, TBH but I bet it was like £40 or something.

WCC (ack almost used ur real n8me), this is for you when yr feeling bloecked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqZAxLqJkzA&list=FLLTIlMvmtkKWCC_QBv384Vw&index=3&feature=plpp_video
I love your arts

also god jeez that fucking fig tree has to be the #1 most haunting metaphor of my life

How did you learn to do this stuff digitally?

OK, the first half of that video I was all "WTF this doesn't even apply because this is not MY PROBLEM, this is not what I'm facing!!!" but the second half of it was just YES, this is the solution, even if that is not the problem, this is totally the solution and I need to remember this. And I'm usually pretty god with that whole disciplined "churn until stuff comes out" because I know that's the only answer. So thank yOU!

I don't really remember how I learned how to do this stuff digitally. My housemate back in NYC bought or pirated a copy of photoshop back in about 1994/5? And I read the manual and just started mucking around with it. Mostly through trial and error, admittedly. I'd scan in my drawings and at first I'd just want to colour them in, then it was, clean them up and colour them in, and then it was, do half the actual drawing in photoshop - but I still don't even know what half of photoshop does! (I only learned Select - Modify - Smooth like, last year!) I don't use my bamboo pad, either, which I should, I've just got so used to working on a Mac track pad. Just trial and error, mostly and seeing what works.

I DON'T KNOW HOW SOMEONE MANAGED TO TAKE A PHOTO FROM THE INSIDE OF MY HEAD. AND YET THEY DID.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m38zolOIFs1rsvop4o1_500.jpg

Zowie! Is that some sort of Bridget Riley installation?

It's PS1, so who knows.

I think that's my new inspiration for interior decor

Not included: the man with the ginger strawberry blond ponytail.

Well I don't often find them at the thrift store, I'll say that.

They're apparently two for a penny in the thrift stores of Cornwall.

Can I show you my favorite wacky psychedelic piece of bs I found at a thrift store? It's this embroidered flower tiger, hidden under plexiglass

http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg407/scaled.php?server=407&filename=img2956o.jpg&res=landing

Wow, that tiger, too, he is trapped in my dreams.

I like that pic var 2: liked it when it was b+w, now the colours suit it yeah!

and now my phone has stopped crashing...

not the last one, obv, the cliffside one, you know

I'm confused.

But here, have a sea arch. Orkney has a sea arch pretty much every 500 yards or so.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8042/8044130623_d24dab6543_o.jpg

I like your new no outlines stuff.

It's 100% digital is why no outlines. I kinda miss the thick outlines, I need to scan some of the outliney sketches I did while sitting on sea walls and stuff.

I saw this and thought of you:
http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2012/10/10/making-waves/

That is a really beautiful blog, actually.

random question for people here who go to art galleries/museums and know a ton about them:

what is the formal name for the info cards that accompany photos/paintings/sculptures/whatever?

i need to find an standard or example of one for a project i'm doing, if anyone could hook up a photo i'd be very grateful.

I think they're called placards. I called up a museum once hoping they'd tell me how to make them properly but they said they just did whatever on foamcore. This was one of the MOMAs.

So I did a book cover! For an exciting Science book about the physics of foam.

http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Foam-2-0-Cappuccino-Cosmos-ebook/dp/B00SE2JR64/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1421595707&sr=8-2&keywords=perkowitz&pebp=1421595716668&peasin=B00SE2JR64

(it's funny that this is being published before mine own book, but there it is.)

We're contemplating doing an A4 poster of the cover artwork (with the text more the way I normally do text) if I can work out how to sell it online. Would anyone at all be interested in buying such a thing if we did one? (Or, better yet, does anyone have any experience good or bad with the myriad ways there are of selling posters / artwork online?)

ahhh that is great! I would buy a poster.

lovely... congrats, branwell! I too would buy a poster. (I secretly want posters of a lot of your artwork tbh.)

nice work.

Thank you! Thank you! I'm v v pleased with how it turned out. :)

I will see what I can do in terms of getting a poster done, and update this thread with details when we have them.